Author: Justine

A cold wintery spell has lingered over Wales for the last 2 weeks allowing us to get out and enjoy some great snowy walks and scrambles over the festive season.

Yesterday a group of us tried to climb up Snowdon up the Watkins path, but it’s not a well used footpath so once we started to climb more steeply we lost the path and were wading through knee to thigh deep snow making very slow progress. The short days and deteriorating weather persuaded us to head back down once we’d reached the ridge by Y Lliwedd. Today we walked the Nantle ridge – a lower but very beautiful walk with a few scrambly bits. What a gorgeous clear sunny day with great views to Snowdon behind us and the Llyn Peninsula with sea on both sides. 

Life is good!

2009 ended well for Cackle TV! We won a 5th major award for the film ‘South island circumnavigation’.
The film of my 3 month expedition has just won best sport and action film at the BOVEC Outdoor Film Festival in Slovenia on 30th December.

This is the 5th win for this warts-and-all film which documents the challenges and the joys of this treacherous 2,400km journey. Barry Shaw & I faced constant surf, strong winds and a helicopter evacuation due to illness. 

Other wins for “South island circumnavigation” are,

*best adventure film at Kendal MFF, 2008
*best adventure film at the Reel Paddling Film Festival 2009
*best adventure film at the Waterwalker Film Festival 2009
*Best water-based adventure film at the Montreal travel and Adventure Film festival 2009.

“South island circumnavigation” is just 1 of the award winning films featured on the DVD ‘This is the Sea 4’. The DVD double disc set contains over 2 and a half hours of exciting and entertaining seakayaking films from around the world. Didn’t get it for Christmas? It’s available in our on-line store, with free shipping worldwide!

I am currently working on a DVD about open boating called “This is Canoeing”. I’ve got so much great stuff that it will be another double DVD disc set with almost 3 hours worth of footage! It’s due to be released in March 2010.

Where was everyone today on the sea? It was a glorious day with sunshine, views of snow covered mountains, very little wind and fantastic clean waves at Penrhyn Mawr tidal race.

After a lovely Christmas Day with our families, Barry and I have enjoyed a couple of days working off some of that turkey and trimmings. On Sunday we hoped to paddle to the Skerries, but the wind was a bit stronger than forecast and we decided it would be much more sensible and sane to walk along the north coast of Anglesey from Cemlyn Bay for a few hours. With our legs suitably exercised, today the wind dropped right off and allowed us a wonderful window to enjoy one of our favourite paddles from Porthdafarch to Penrhyn Mawr and South stack. When we first got to the tidal race at PRM it was just starting and we played in small waves before heading around the rocks to South Stack. 

It was a gorgeous clear day with views across to the snow-clad peaks of Snowdonia and the Llyn Penisula. We tried to surf some small waves off South Stack before heading back to PRM for one more play. By then it was mid-flood and the waves had built to a fun and exciting size. The lack of wind and moderate swell meant the waves were lovely and clean and we had a great time flying down the faces, burying our bows, getting spun around to face backwards and both of us coming very close to rolling. I thought I was going to get looped at one point and was half relieved (it’s pretty cold out!) and half disappointed ( it would have been pretty exciting!) not to.

We were having so much fun that we stayed out until it practically got dark, landing back at Porthdafarch at 4.30pm. What a great day!

We are trying out some Valley seakayaks – Barry was in the Avocet today which he loves and found very maneuverable & responsive. I was in the Avocet LV which I really enjoyed ( although I’d like another go in the Avocet aswell). I’m enjoying trying out some different kayaks as they all respond slightly differently and I’m sure it’s good for my paddling to experience that. 

We’re also trying out some Mitchell blades which are made pretty locally to us in Chester. We both like the way they feel in the water.

“This is the Sea” is now available as a digital download for the bargain price of under 6 Euros – just in time for Christmas!! I’m not sure how you wrap up a digital download, but you could always put the download information in an envelope for someone, or buy it for yourself – after all we should spoil ourselves at Christmas aswell!! Or perhaps you could download it and burn it to a DVD for someone? Then again, if you’d rather have the physical disc in it’s original cover with the disc artwork then you can buy them from the Cackle TV store, or from your local kayaking and outdoor shop. Remember you can save money if you buy more than 1 DVD. I’m interested in feedback about digital downloads. The recommended price seems a bit cheap to me, but then maybe it appeals to people who wouldn’t pay more for a physical DVD? Should I make the other DVDs available as digital downloads? What about selling individual films from the DVDs? For example I could sell the award winning film of my circumnavigation of New Zealand? This is part of “This is the Sea 4”, but I could offer just the NZ film for a lower price?